In an existing storage area network (SAN), input/output (I/O) requests between host computers and disk drives are routed via redundant array of independent disks (RAID) controller to a drive tray and then to respective disk drive through a Switch-on-Chip (SOC) channel in the drive tray. These I/O requests are processed in a First in, First out (FIFO) order. Further, the read, write and status requests are not distinguished and/or prioritized and therefore, the I/O requests coming from critical applications may be delayed. As the number of I/O requests increases with the size of the SAN infrastructure, there may be significant reduction in performance of data functions, due to latency in data commitment, deadlocks in the drive tray and resulting I/O bottlenecks. Further, most of the major bottlenecks in a SAN are at the drive backend because of increased and saturated I/O paths. Most of the existing solutions virtualizes around the host, network switch, and interface between host and the SAN.